A shadow war has already begun, aiming to undermine the Iraqi leader and his defenses even before the first shot is fired

One day in mid-September, the phone rang in the Washington office of a former U.S. government official with close ties to the Iraqi exile community. On the other end of the line was an old Iraqi friend, now living in Europe, whom the former official had met when he was stationed in the Middle East in the 1990s. There were some pleasantries; then the Iraqi cut to the chase. In the past two months, he said, four senior Iraqi security officials had contacted him and asked if he could help them establish lines of communication to the U.S. so that if...